Abstract
Low-income minorities face many complex barriers to building stable and healthy relationships. AVANCE Houston, a non-profit community-based organization in Houston, Texas, developed the Strong Families, Strong Communities (SFSC) program to address such barriers by providing interactive healthy marriage and relationship skills workshops to low-income English- and Spanish-speaking Hispanic and English-speaking African American individuals. Using a randomized control trial (RCT) design with random assignment to the 7-week treatment group (n = 649) or a 12-month wait-list control group (n = 600), we examined the impact of the program on four dimensions of relationship functioning: relationship satisfaction, connectedness, and quality; and conflict resolution, at post-test and then 6 and 12 months later. Using a repeated measure multilevel model with a difference-in-difference impact estimate, we found that all four dimensions of relationship functioning improved with small effect sizes that were larger than those found in previous relationship education programs for low-income individuals (Cohen’s d‘s of 0.18 for relationship satisfaction, 0.24 for connectedness, 0.19 for quality, and 0.20 for conflict resolution). Findings from this study provide evidence of program effectiveness on dimensions of relationship functioning for low-income minorities, comparable to or better than those seen in other healthy marriage program RCTs. The findings of this impact evaluation are promising regarding the impact of programs like SFSC on dimensions of relationship functioning in low-income Hispanic and African American participants.
摘要
低收入少数族裔在建立稳定和健康的关系方面面临许多复杂的障碍。AVANCE 休斯顿是德克萨斯州休斯敦的一个非营利性社区组织，它制定了“强大家庭、强大社区”(SFSC)计划，通过向低收入的说英语和西班牙语的西班牙裔和说英语的非裔美国人提供互动式的健康婚姻和关系技巧讲习班，来解决这些障碍。研究采的是用随机对照试验(RCT)设计，随机分配到7周治疗组(n=649)或12个月等待名单对照组(n=600)。我们研究了该项目对关系功能四个维度的影响: 关系满意度、连接度和质量; 以及在测试后，6个月和12个月后的该项目对冲突调解的影响。研究使用具有差异中差异影响预测元素的重复测量多层次模型，我们发现所有四个方面的关系功能都得到了改善，其影响大小比以前针对低收入者的关系教育项目中发现的要大 (关系满意度的Cohen ‘s d ‘为0.18，连接性0.24，质量0.19，冲突解决0.20)。这项研究的结果为低收入少数群体在关系功能维度上的项目其有效性提供了证据，与其他健康婚姻项目随机对照试验的结果差不多或更好。像SFSC这样旨在研究针对低收入西班牙裔和非裔美国人的关系功能维度的项目，其影响评估的结果是有大有裨益的。